January 11, 2008

Whoooa! Just a damned minute! 70 dollars! Take pity on the taxpayer, you crazy tax-and-spend Democrat!

IN THE COMMENTS: I say:

Maybe it's like the butterfly effect. If you took $70 and spent it exactly the right way, it really would stimulate the economy. You just have to be really creative. Think about it. You have $70. How will you jump start the economy?

Blake says:

$70 to "jump-start" a trillion dollar economy.

If it were a little more, say, $7000, I could take some talking heads to a really nice lunch and change their minds.

But with $70 I'd open a cheap website (jumpstarttheeconomy.com) and encourage everyone to send me one dollar, which I would then spend on lottery tickets.

No...uh...I'd set up a pyramid. People like pyramid schemes, that's why MLMs and Social Security are so popular. I'd have plenty of money in no time, and so would the first two people under me who signed up.

An Edjamikated Redneck said:

70 bucks, huh?

I'd spend it at Walmart on books by conservative authors.

Walmart makes a few bucks and can hire another American, reducing both the unemployment figures AND reducing the roles of the uninsured by a family.

The conservative authors make a few bucks, and best of all, their books move a few points up the NYT bestseller list.

This is where I get the best bang for my $70; faced with multiple conservative writers in the top ten, the NYT has a conniption in the editorial pages and has to hire more editorialists, printers, distributors, buy more paper and presses, all stimulating the economy to well over my $70.

"Men who work in "pink collar" professions, such as clerks and classroom aides, are 47% more likely to lash out in violence against wives or live-in girlfriends than a control group of white-collar managers, according to a recent study by University of California, Riverside sociologist Scott Melzer. The theory: Society's pressure and expectations about the role of men in the work world might mean that a man is ridiculed by society for his choice to do "women's work," causing him to bring that extra stress home. "

OK, so maybe there are some (and I'm not referring to Sen. Clinton) who have never mastered the concept of base 10 and the importance of decimal placement. I know of a second-grader or two currently struggling with that concept.

But even THOSE second-graders know how to follow links. They've got that goin' for 'em, at least.

Maxine Weiss said...The theory: Society's pressure and expectations about the role of men in the work world might mean that a man is ridiculed by society for his choice to do "women's work," causing him to bring that extra stress home."

That's similar to my theory of leftist male predominance in academia/social work and journalism. These guys feel unmanly so they tend to have a chip on their shoulders about the "real men" of society. Cops/businessmen/the military or anybody with more masculine social status.

They become resentful of the whole "system" of capitalism/racism/imperialism/sexism/patriarchy.

If Karl Marx had a manly job, or any job for that matter, he never would have written Das Capital or the Manifesto.

Maybe it's like the butterfly effect. If you took $70 and spent it exactly the right way, it really would stimulate the economy. You just have to be really creative. Think about it. You have $70. How will you jump start the economy?

Ann Althouse said..."Maybe it's like the butterfly effect. If you took $70 and spent it exactly the right way, it really would stimulate the economy. You just have to be really creative. Think about it. You have $70. How will you jump start the economy?"

Well, that's the thing - you don't have to spend it the right way, you just have to spend it a good enough way. What causes a recession is that people read headlines like "recession imminent," and start hoarding, which ripples through the economy. People are worried about money, so they stop going to restaurants; the restaurants reduce staff, producing more economic anxiety producing yet more slowdown. The trick is to keep the whole thing in motion; as long as the wheels keeps turning, the economy will do fine, but the problem is that people have a tendancy to do the worst possible thing in response: to slam on the brakes.

If I had $70 (and believe me I wish I did) I would spend $25 on a dictionary for middle_class_guy, $40 on an intake session with an MFCC for Maxine, $3 on a campaign contribution to John Edwards, and a $2 donation to Althouse in the hopes that she'll vlog eating another egg salad sandwich, in a claw foot tub, while drinking a martini out of a mason jar.

If it were a little more, say, $7000, I could take some talking heads to a really nice lunch and change their minds.

But with $70 I'd open a cheap website (jumpstarttheeconomy.com) and encourage everyone to send me one dollar, which I would then spend on lottery tickets.

No...uh...I'd set up a pyramid. People like pyramid schemes, that's why MLMs and Social Security are so popular. I'd have plenty of money in no time, and so would the first two people under me who signed up.

Gahrie said...Am I the only one who remembers what a true bad economy looks like? The 1970's aren't that long ago.......

No. I rememeber it. I lived it. I struggled to make a living through them. The Libs want us to return to those days of glory. Then, they can bring more programs on line so we become more reliant on government and less self reliant and self determined.

I apologize for using the terms self reliant and self determined. I realize that those two terms are banned from civil conversation by the political PC police. I hope I am not banned. My bad.

Walmart makes a few bucks and can hire another American, reducing both the unemployment figures AND reducing the roles of the uninsured by a family.

The conservative authors make a few bucks, and best of all, their books move a few points up the NYT bestseller list.

This is where I get the best bang for my $70; faced with multiple conservative writers in the top ten, the NYT has a conniption in the editorial pages and has to hire more editorialists, printers, distributors, buy more paper and presses, all stimulating the economy to well over my $70.

I am assuming that a contract is a contract trumps wife 2 kids on the street which means seemingly bupkis to you.

Strawman alert.

The choice isn't between bailing out irresponsible behavior or having families on the street.

Anyone who could afford to buy a house (even with the ridiculously low interest rates) will be able to afford to rent a house or an apartment. (especially since rents are going to come down with all the new rentals properties on the market)

What these people are going to suffer is a bad credit rating and huge personal debt, which they deserve.

No one forced them to buy more house than they can afford. No one forced them to pull equity out of their house to live beyond their means.

Love him or hate him, Christopher Hitchens does have a way with words. These are excerpts from a column in today’s Chicago Sun Times.

"Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential aspirant, is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool."

"…while his supporters -- most especially the white ones -- sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive."

"Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female…"

"Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be "black," anyway?"

"If you wanted a "black" president or vice president so much, you could long ago have turned out en masse for Angela Davis -- also the first woman to be on a national ticket -- or for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. So, why didn't you? Could it have been the politics?"

The California hatred was spawned by all those Beach Blanket movies, depicting the state as a place where men simply hung out on the beach and watched Annette Funicello's breasts swelling her bikini top all day.

But thanks to global warming, winter is warmer in Philly than it is here. So you can turn off your envy-driven scoff machine.

I am getting my guns, going to the range, and practicing double taps.

Where can you do that? Ranges won't let you do that here: they mandate a time lag between shots.

Mr. hdhouse or Mr. Putz, whatever your name is,Please do not ever try to insult me again. I have been insulted by the best and you do not even come close. It would unleash a torrent of demeaning insults and invective too horrible to comprehend. You would spend the next ten years going to therapy and sitting in the corner, cringing and sucking your thumb. I, on the other hand, would be banned from here.

Blake,Once Soupy told all the little boys and girls to go to their mommy's and daddy's wallets and purses and take the gren paper with the pictures on it and mail it to him. There was an address, if i remember correctly.

One more thing, Hillary has proposed a three month moratorium on foreclosures. Putting aside that it would take at least fourteen months for this to happen, what do you think lenders are going to if she were elected? Yup, immediately foreclose on EVERYONE who's delinquent--the risk is simply too high that three months would turn into six which would then turn into a year.